Benezit Dictionary of Artists

A foundational tool for the study of Art History

Editor in Chief: Dr. Kathy Battista

Features more than 11,000 images of artists' signatures, monograms, and stamps of sale

Auction records, museum holdings, and exhibition histories provide a complete picture of the artist's life

Learning resources, including thematic guides and abbreviations, enable quick and easy access to featured content

Updated three times a year with original content, expanding its global coverage

Now online for the first time, the Benezit Dictionary of Artists provides art historians, curators, dealers, collectors, and students with a definitive entry point for art research.

Benezit Dictionary of Artists

A foundational tool for the study of Art History

Editor in Chief: Dr. Kathy Battista

Description

Since its first publication in 1911, the Benezit Dictionary of Artists has become one of the most comprehensive and definitive resources of artists biographies. Revered for its global scope and its excellent coverage of European artists, Benezit is distinguished by its coverage of lesser-known artists, images of artists' signatures, historical auction records, and lists of museum holdings.

Available through the acclaimed Oxford Art Online platform, Benezit is expanding with new entries and a suite of thematic guides for use in the classroom. It can be searched alongside lauded resources including Grove Art Online, providing art historians, curators, dealers, collectors, and students with an unrivalled starting point for art research.

Benezit Dictionary of Artists

A foundational tool for the study of Art History

Editor in Chief: Dr. Kathy Battista

From Our Blog

We're thrilled to welcome Dr. Kathy Battista as the new Editor in Chief of the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Director of the MA program in Contemporary Art at Sotheby's Institute, she has dedicated her life to furthering knowledge of art history through a teaching career, one that has taken her from London to New York City. From issues in contemporary art to dramatic changes in the art market over the past decade, Battista addresses all our burning questions regarding the state of her field.

In the first autumn of World War I, a German infantryman from the 25th Reserve Division sent this pithy greeting to his children in Schwarzenberg, Saxony. He scrawled the message in looping script on the back of a Feldpostkarte, or field postcard, one that had been designed for the Bahlsen cookie company by the German artist and illustrator nne Koken.

By Kandice Rawlings Leonardo da Vinci was born 562 years ago today, and we're still fascinated with his life and work. It's no real mystery why ' he was an extraordinary person, a genius and a celebrity in his own lifetime. He left behind some remarkable artifacts in the form of paintings and writings and drawings on all manner of subjects.

Leonardo da Vinci was the illegitimate son of the Florentine notary Ser Piero da Vinci, who married Albiera di Giovanni Amadori, the daughter of a patrician family, in the year Leonardo was born. Little is known about the artist's natural mother, Caterina, other than that five years after Leonardo's birth she married an artisan from Vinci named Chartabriga di Piero del Veccha.

By Stephen Bury At rare moments in time a library can have a singular impact on history. The recent release of George Clooney's film Monuments Men (2014) has triggered an interest in the role that the Frick Art Reference Library played in the preparation of maps identifying works of art at risk in Nazi-occupied Europe. For the first time in history a belligerent was taking care of cultural treasures in a war zone.

By Kandice Rawlings The Frick Collection in New York recently closed its Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis exhibition ofÂ fifteen seventeenth-century Dutch paintings on loan from the Hague museum, which is currently closed for remodeling. The show (which has already been to San Francisco, Atlanta, and Tokyo, and opens next in Bologna) was a blockbuster.

By Kandice Rawlings The port city of Shanghai is poised to become another major center of the global art world, possibly even displacing Beijing as China's artistic capital. Since founding a biennial and art fair in 1996 and 1997, respectively, major institutions supporting the visual arts have sprung up or expanded.

By Kate Scott The last time President Abraham Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln sat for a portrait photograph together was in the early 1870s, five years or more after the president's death and burial. The president, filmy and translucent, tenderly placed his see-through hands on his wife's shoulders as she looked into the camera.